


Once, Long Ago...

by PSIDontKnow



Category: OFF (Game)
Genre: Headcanon, Past Future Time shift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 18:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PSIDontKnow/pseuds/PSIDontKnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He hated sleeping, hated the awful dreams that followed him in that realm. It wasn’t that they were always bad, it’s that it made him long for before they had been cast into this awful game.<br/>It made him long for Home</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once, Long Ago...

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this is just based on a little headcanon of mine, so, uh, enjoy I guess?

“There! All done!” The teen laughs as he lifts the last plush up to show the other person in the room. She sucks on her lollypop in a way that’d probably be arousing if he saw her as anything other than a sister before she answers.  
“Zacky, you’re greedy, you’ve already sold enough of those thingies, right?” He laughed, moving some of his messy black hair from his face.  
“You can never have enough money, but these aren’t for selling, they’re for Hugo!” He grins widely, picking up the other doll to show her the opposing characters.  
“Ain’t that the little kid in the hospital you like?”  
“Yeah, he’s really sweet, you’d like him Sucre.”

Zacharie jumps awake with a start, sweat rolling down his face in rivulets. He hated sleeping, hated the awful dreams that followed him in that realm. It wasn’t that they were always bad, it’s that it made him long for before. He sighed, hanging his head, trying to get rid of the swirling nausea that came from jumping awake.  
“Once, long ago…” He began, reciting the words to calm himself. “There was an evil king…”

“…Who was so ugly that his face resembled a toad, so they called him the Toad King.” The teen made the intricate plushes he made act out the story as he told it to Hugo, the sick boy in the hospital bed looking at them with glee. “One day, a brave masked night came up to the king, to tell him to stop mistreating his subjects or leave, but the king didn’t.” He brought up the knight plush, making him ‘talk’ to the Toad King. “So the brave knight tried to reason with him, but when that didn’t work, he put the King on trial.” Right as he finished his sentence, two of the nurses walked into the hospital room.  
“The honorable judge Pablo helped them to decide what should be done about the Toad King.” Zacharie laughed, tossing a small plush to one of the nurses, the man catching it easily.  
“Tell me Zacharie, why did you decide to make me a cat person?” Pablo asked as his less jovial brother Valerie measured out Hugo’s medicine and found the tube of albuterol for his breathing treatment.  
“Well cats are neither good nor evil, so I figured a cat would make a good judge, right Hugo?” He turned for the boy’s approval, getting a grin from him.  
“Yeah, plus cats are really cool, and you look like a cat Pablo!” The boys giggled as he earned a high-five from Zacharie.  
“I am very sure that my twin nor I look like animals of the feline persuasion Hugo.” Valerie drawled, handing the boy the vial of steroids he had to take. He frowned before chugging the thick, red serum. Zacharie watched as he took the rest of the pills, waiting until he had the mask pumping mist into his lungs on before continuing.  
“The Judge looked at all the good and bad things that the evil king had done before declaring that he should be banished-”  
“Banished?” The boy asked, his voice muffled by the mask.  
“Sent away forever. The masked knight took the evil king far out to the desert and-” He stops as he hears someone clearing their throat at the door and looks up from the dolls to see Hugo’s parents. “And that’s all for today champ, I’ll be back next week, you keep the little guys with you, okay?” He ruffles the kid’s hair before standing to leave. He’s met the mother a few times, she seems nice enough and it’s to her that he gives his number, in case Hugo gets sent back home so he can come and finish the story. The father just stands back, tense and uncomfortable, looking claustrophobic and washed out in the brightly colored children’s wing.

Zacharie can put on his mask without ever having to look in a mirror now, it’s something he’s perfected. The scars crisscrossing across his hands are a reminder to not look in the mirror again. He’s had Sucre ask him so many times to take it off, he never did though. She couldn’t remember why she wanted him to, just that it was important that he should, but he won’t. He realized soon after coming to this world that he was the only one who remembered ‘before’ clearly, even though Pablo remembered most of it, he didn’t see it with the bitter clarity the merchant had. Some days, Zacharie felt bad that he had made Pablo and his brother cats, but the man had never seemed opposed to it. No more than Japhet had resented being a bird in the beginning.   
He’s beginning to think that the reason he can remember is because this is as much Hugo’s world as it is his father’s, even more so, and Zacharie had shaped the boy’s perception of people. It sickened him though, that the boy thought he was the masked hero, when he was nothing but the Toad King.

“Hey squirt! Looks like you got to go home.” Zacharie grinned widely, walking into the boy’s room. He looked up from the book he was reading, the smile on his face falling as he caught sight of Zacharie’s.  
“What happened to you?” The boy looked close to tears at the bruises on the teen’s face, the split lips and the swollen eye.  
“I had knightly duties and wasn’t able to dodge everything!” He sounds light hearted as he says this, wiping away Hugo’s worries. He wasn’t going to tell them that some jocks had used Sucre in a bad way, and then spread awful rumours about her, so Zacharie and a trusty hocky stick had a brief talk with them. Zacharie was surprisingly in good shape in comparison. “Okay, so do you have the dolls?” Hugo grabbed them from a small box on the night stand next to his bed, spreading them out on the bed spread as the older boy sat down.  
“The masked knight was taking the Toad King to the desert.” The boy grins widely, eager to continue the story.  
“Gotcha. So the masked knight takes the Toad King to the middle of the desert, using a portal spell to get back to the kingdom, telling the former king that if he can find his way out of the desert, he’ll become a better person. Once he goes back, the kingdom is much more peaceful, nobody’s sad, nobody’s hungry, and the knight is filling in as king until they can find the King’s brother and his family to take over the kingdom.” Zacharie pulls three new dolls out of his bag, handing them to the boy. There’s a small boy in a red outfit, a beautiful queen, swirls covering her long dress, and a man, his fantasy suit looking somewhat similar to a baseball player.  
“Is that the end of the story?”  
“No way! I’m just getting started. After two weeks of not being able to find the family, the court magician comes to the masked knight.” A tall doll is drawn out of the bag as well, a long coat falling past the plush’s feet. “’My lord,’ he says, ‘The toad king has joined forces with the witch Sugar and has kidnapped the royal family.’ The knight was silent, thinking what he should do before speaking to his trusty servant Elsen. ‘Ready my horse, I must go save them!’” Hugo jumps up, wooting in joy at the plot development as he pulls the Sugar and Elsen dolls out.   
“Zacharie, your mother just called, I do believe it’s time for you to leave.” Hugo’s mother peeks into the room, smiling at her happy son.  
“Sure thing ma’am. Thanks for letting me come over. I’ll see you later Hugo.” The boy grins as Zacharie musses his hair again. He once again thanks Hugo’s mother as he leaves the room, heading out the door before she stops him again.  
“Next week, we’re having a party for Hugo’s birthday, would you like to come? He doesn’t have very many friends, and I believe he’s adopted you as a big brother.”  
“May I bring my sister?”  
“Sure, as long as she doesn’t misbehave.”  
“Don’t worry ma’am.”

He decided to look in a mirror. He’s just seen the Batter, seen him on his way to the Room, and wants to see if he can see a monster in his own eyes too. He can’t take it anymore, staring in that mirror, but he stays there, raking dulled finger nails down his face, trying to make it change. He can’t take the sight of his own face anymore, because it hasn’t changed. Nothing’s changed, his left eye is even still yellowed from the fading bruise and it bothers him, because everyone changed, some more than others but he’s still the same seventeen year old boy with fading bruises, acne, and only the barest whisp of stubble.  
He hates his face so, so much.

The party was a disaster.  
That was putting it mildly.  
Zacharie and Sugar had shown up in time to hear the screaming match between Hugo’s parents, to comfort the boy and distract him the best they could with the dolls and story. It made him laugh to know that the evil witch Sugar was actually Sucre, a fact that made her pout before tickling him. It was later that both parents came out to apologize, the mother shining in fixed make-up and the father just plain uncomfortable. They opted to open presents then. Sucre had gotten the boy a fancy, bright red coat, his father had gotten him a whole stack of comics while his mother got him a toy truck.  
Zacharie gave him the end to the story, telling him of the Knight’s talking messenger bird, the royal toy maker, and the Judge’s surly brother, bringing out the dolls to go with the new characters. They ate the food that was brought for them before the cake was brought out. They sang ‘Happy Birthday’, Zacharie making faces at Hugo the whole time.   
“Make a wish, son, blow out the candles.” It’s the first time the teen’s seen Hugo’s father acting like one and feels a weak reflection of the boy’s own feelings before he blows out the candles.  
And everything was gone.

This was absurd. Zacharie frowned under his frog mask, rearranging Hugo’s small body as he had the queen’s. He had turned into a toddler in this world, surely a reflection of how he had felt, but Zacharie still had a moment of blood thirst for the Batter. This was his son dammit! He wanted to scream it to the heavens, to the man, but he couldn’t, he had to wait until the game was over. He could hear the fighting in the other room, assuming the player had chosen the Judge’s ending from the ungodly howls he could hear.  
“Bad ducky.” He whispered silently, getting up to stand by the door. It was a while more before the Judge came limping out, blood smothering his white fur.  
“It is done.” Zacharie chuckled a bit before it escalated to full blown hysteric cackles.  
“Everyone’s dead, because of a birthday wish and a story I wanted to tell a sick child.” He sank to the floor, clutching his middle as he laughed harder. “It was my own story, you know? He must’ve wished for it to be like my story, but this is what it had been, and- I killed them, my fucking god.” He couldn’t quit laughing, not even when the cat left, going to do the walk through for the ending. He stopped the hysterics not long before the cat returned, laying in the room with the body of a little boy he’d thought of as his brother, and he kept thinking one thing.  
“It’s all my fault.”


End file.
